Wednesday, December 25, 2002
- Japan Supporting U.S. Invasion of Iraq
It is time to stop pretending that Japan is on the sidelines in the coming war. Japan’s opportunistic Liberal Democratic Party (Ž©—R–¯“}?j leaders, fondly remembering the days of colonialism and the Pacific War that they still pretend was fought to liberate Asia from the Western Imperialists, are now JOINING the Americans in a new imperial war on Iraq. Under the pretense of making an “international contribution” the Japanese will, more than ever before, actually lend a helping hand in killing Iraqi civilians. This is not completely new as Japanese money financed the war of 12 years ago and has helped to maintain the sanctions regime that has killed hundreds of thousands of people in the intervening years.
Trying to sell an increasingly violent stance to the public, the Japanese government appeals to people’s sense of guilt, saying that it is “not enough” to send money. No, it is not enough. Now they have to directly participate in the killing, and call it internationalism at the same time. Lies, lies, lies. Shame!
Here is an article on the subject from the Agence France Press
TOKYO, Dec 23 (AFP) - Japan has unofficially offered its support for a US-led attack on Iraq to make up for its belated and largely unappreciated support for the Gulf War in 1991, a report said Monday. The government gave its unofficial pledge of support to US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage this month in Tokyo, Kyodo news agency reported, citing unidentified sources close to the government.
The foreign ministry could not be reached for comment Monday, a public holiday.
The early offer reflects the fact that Japan’s belated support for US-led attacks on Iraq in January 1991 did not receive meaningful appreciation in the international community, the sources said.
The announcement shows Japan does not want to make the same “mistake” again, Kyodo reported the sources as saying.
Armitage was in Japan from December 8 to 10 and met Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and top cabinet ministers to drum up support for a possible war with Iraq and to thank Japan for its support in the military campaign in Afghanistan.
Japan sent a hi-tech Aegis destroyer to the Indian Ocean last week to protect Japanese vessels’ refueling of US military ships, a type of rear-guard support that the government says does not violate the nation’s peace constitution.
- Japanese Americans Express Solidarity with American Muslims
This statement was initiated by civil rights activist Yuri Kochiyama - please distribute and get others to sign onto this statement.
We are concerned people of conscience in the Japanese American community who cannot stand silent as the U.S. government wages war, targets immigrants, especially Arabs and Muslims who are rounded-up and detained and erodes the freedoms we have fought for.
Monday, December 23, 2002
- An open letter to BBC News Online by Harel Barzilai
This is reprinted from the Znet Sustainers forum with the permission of the author.
Dear BBC:
I am writing with great concern about BBC’s bias, unprofessional, and indeed self-contradictory reporting on the Iraq weapons inspections—and your omissions of critical and central parts of the report by UN’s chief weapons inspector Hans Blix and the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed El Baradei.
In particular, the excerpt chosen by BCC to represent a 10 minute video segment [http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/cta/events02/world/un/blix19dec.ram ] of Blix and Baradei was entitled: “Iraq has missed an opportunity says Blix”
However, watching the video reveals a very different picture than the one represented by the title. More alarmingly in terms of the practice of good professional reporting, the lead story “Iraq Accused of UN Violation” continues this distortion.
The story [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/2592243.stm ] starts with no fewer than the first three paragraphs quoting US Secretary of State Powell, then followed by two more paragraphs still focusing on official statements by Washington.
- China, U.S. Australia, Google. Panama (etc.) Censor Internet
Welcome to the Global Internet Liberty Campaign Newsletter.
Welcome to GILC Alert, the newsletter of the Global Internet Liberty Campaign. We are an international organization of groups working for cyber-liberties, who are determined to preserve civil liberties and human rights on the Internet. We hope you find this newsletter interesting, and we very much hope that you will avail yourselves of the action items in future issues. If you are a part of an organization that would be interested in joining GILC, please contact us at
Free expression
Free expression
[1] Chinese Net users face enhanced censorware, arrests
[2] Russian firm cleared in eBook copyright case
[3] Australian high court ruling endangers Net speech
[4] Teen Norwegian DVD programmer faces criminal charges
[5] ICANN shuns public elections in new bylaws
[6] Finnish bill may curb Net chatboard comments
[7] Net blockers deny access to important health info
[8] Vietnamese Net dissident gets 4 year jail sentence
[9] Australian gov’t ponders blocking of protest websites
[10] Google censors German & French search results
[11] Panama tries to block Internet ports
[12] Council of Europe adopts Net censorship protocol
Privacy
[13] US gov’t plans Total Informational Awareness spy system
[14] Regulators warn Verichip tracking implant maker
[15] US appeals court allows easier wiretapping rules
[16] Finland gov’t data retention stance draws fire
[17] Study: British workplace Net monitoring on the rise
[18] New rules unveiled for webbug trackers
[19] TiVo digital recorder makes mistakes, stereotypes users
[20] Court strikes down US gov’t virus spy attack
[21] US court allow blind police Net searches
[22] Swiss Big Brother Awards ceremony held
[23] New GILC member: AEL & EFFI
Reports follow:
- Bush Humor
Friday, December 20, 2002
- Israel/Occupied Territories: Conscientious objectors jailed while soldiers who commit grave violat
Amnesty International has today written to Shaul Mofaz, Israeli Minister of Defence, to express concern over the imprisonment of Israeli conscripts and reservists who refuse to perform military service or to serve in the Occupied Territories, as they believe that by doing so they would contribute to, or participate in, human rights violations.
- Venezuelan Elite Attack President Chavez
Listen to RealAudio version of program: http://66.175.55.251/btl122702.ram AOL users: Click here!
(Needs RealPlayer to listen!)
THIS WEEK’S PROGRAM
1) Venezuelan Elite Attack President Chavez to Block Reforms that Benefit the Poor
Interview by Scott Harris
Gregory Wilpert, a sociologist and freelance journalist currently living in Caracas, assesses the effects of the two-week national strike, popular support for President Chavez and the fate of key reforms proposed by his government.
- MEDIA ALERT: BBC CHANNELING GOVERNMENT PROPAGANDA
from MEDIA LENS: Correcting for the distorted vision of the corporate media
We have just sent this letter to BBC news reporter Margaret Gilmore, and to Richard Sambrook, director of BBC news:
Dear Margaret Gilmore
Foreign Secretary Jack Straw declared today that Saddam Hussein “had rejected the path of peace” (BBC1 News at Six, December 18, 2002) increasing the likelihood of military action some time next year. The clouds of war are gathering fast over Iraq.
We have noticed a consistent pattern in recent BBC reports, beginning November 7, the day before the latest UN Resolution (1441) on Iraq. The BBC has passed on almost daily reports of terrorist threats based on government sources. To select a few examples from this month at random: there has been a report that sky marshals may soon be guarding against terror attacks on British planes, a report of possible smallpox vaccinations against the threat of a terrorist attack, of the arrest of a Taliban sympathiser by anti-terrorist police, of North Africans arrested on terrorism charges in Edinburgh and London. Tonight (December 18) you delivered the useful information that intelligence services believe that if al-Qaeda were to carry out an attack in the UK, they would probably go for a ‘soft target’ - large public gatherings - using traditional weapons such as cars packed with explosives, etc.
- Hundreds of Muslim Immigrants Rounded Up in Calif.
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Hundreds of Iranian and other Middle East citizens were in southern California jails on Wednesday after coming forward to comply with a new rule to register with immigration authorities only to wind up handcuffed and behind bars.
Shocked and frustrated Islamic and immigrant groups estimate that more than 500 people have been arrested in Los Angeles, neighboring Orange County and San Diego in the past three days under a new nationwide anti-terrorism program. Some unconfirmed reports put the figure as high as 1,000.
The arrests sparked a demonstration by hundreds of Iranians outside a Los Angeles immigration office. The protesters carried banners saying “What’s next? Concentration camps?” and “What happened to liberty and justice?.”
A spokesman for the Immigration and Naturalization Service said no numbers of people arrested would be made public. A Justice Department (news - web sites) spokesman could not be reached for comment.
The head of the southern California chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (news - web sites) compared the arrests to the internment of Japanese Americans in camps during the Second World War.
“I think it is shocking what is happening. It is reminiscent of what happened in the past with the internment of Japanese Americans. We are getting a lot of telephone calls from people. We are hearing that people went down wanting to cooperate and then they were detained,” said Ramona Ripston, the ACLU’s executive director.
JAILS OVERFLOWING
One activist said local jails were so overcrowded that the immigrants could be sent to Arizona, where they could face weeks or months in prisons awaiting hearings before immigration judges or deportation.
“It is a shock. You don’t expect this to happen. It is really putting fright and apprehension in the community. People who come from these countries—this is what they expect from their government. Not from America,” said Sabiha Khan of the Southern California chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations.
The arrests were part of a post Sept. 11 program that requires all males over 16 from a list of 20 Arab or Middle East countries, who do not have permanent resident status in the United States, to register with U.S. immigration authorities.
Monday was the deadline for men from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya and Sudan. News of the mass arrests came first in southern California, which is home to more than 600,000 Iranian exiles and their families.
Officials declined to give figures for those arrested or for the numbers of people who turned up to register, be fingerprinted and have their photographs taken.
“We are not releasing any numbers,” said Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) spokesman Francisco Arcaute.
CALLS FOR HELP
Islamic groups and the local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said they had been swamped with calls for help.
INS spokesman Arcaute said those arrested had violated immigration laws, overstayed their visas, or were wanted for crimes. The program was prompted by concern about the lack of records on tourists, students and other visitors to the United States after the Sept. 11 hijack plane attacks on New York and Washington.
Islamic community leaders said many of the detainees had been living, working and paying taxes in the United States for five or 10 years, and had families here.
“Terrorists most likely wouldn’t come to the INS to register. It is really a bad way to go about it. They are being treated as criminals and that really goes against American ideals of fairness, and justice and democracy,” Khan said.
The Iranian protesters said many of those detained were victims of official delays in processing visa and green card requests.
“My father, they just took him in,” one young man told reporters. “They’ve been treating him like an animal. They put him in a room with, like, 50 other people and no bed or anything.”
Khan said one of those in jail was a doctor, who was being sponsored for U.S. citizenship when his sponsor died.
One Syrian man said he went to register in Orange County with a dozen friends. He was the only one to come out of the INS office. “All my friends are inside right now,” M.M. Trapici, 45, told reporters. “I have to visit the family for each one today. Most of them have small kids.”
- Penn’s Words Distorted (Institute for Public Accuracy)
Thursday, December 19, 2002
* Penn’s Words Distorted * Views on Dissent
The following statement has been released by Sean Penn’s office:
In sharp contrast to some misleading claims—primarily emanating from media outlets owned by Rupert Murdoch—the statements made by Sean Penn about Iraq have been clear and straightforward. In his open letter to President Bush, printed in The Washington Post on October 18, 2002, Mr. Penn wrote: “There can be no acceptance of the criminal viciousness of the tyrant, Saddam Hussein.” As has been widely reported by responsible American media organizations, Sean Penn conducted himself with care and sensitivity to his fellow Americans while in Iraq.
- MEDIA ALERT: MESSAGE FROM AMERICA: ITN DECLARES WAR ON IRAQ
From MEDIA LENS: Correcting for the distorted vision of the corporate media
Any lingering notions that we have an independent and free media system must surely be evaporating under the vast weight of evidence emerging as the US and Britain manipulate and deceive their way to a war for control of Iraq’s oil. Consider tonight’s breathtaking report on ITN’s Evening News at 6:30. Newsreader Katie Derham began the report on Iraq, declaring:
“Saddam Hussein has lied to the United Nations and the world is one step closer to a war with Iraq. That’s the message from America tonight, as the UN’s chief weapons inspector admitted there’s nothing new in Saddam’s weapons dossier. The White House confirmed a short while ago that president Bush is now ramping up towards an attack.” (December 19, 2002)
Once again, the role of the media is merely to report the view of power. Given that this is the case, power is free to do exactly as it pleases - the public will be told what power believes is right, wrong, good and bad. With no rational challenge, with all other views ignored as irrelevant, the public will be in no position to contradict the “message from America”.
Derham handed over to International Editor Bill Neely, who asked, “What’s missing?” in the Iraqi arms dossier. Neely’s answer:
“Iraq doesn’t account for hundreds of artillery shells filled with mustard gas that inspectors know it had. Iraq said in the past it had lost them!”
No need to question if these missing artillery shells are being proposed in all seriousness as a reason for launching a massive war. No need to question if use of these awesome weapons - described by arms inspectors as battlefield weaponry of minimal importance - might be deterred by the US’s 6,144 nuclear warheads. No need to question why, if these weapons are such a dread threat, weapons inspectors have been allowed to come and go as they please in Iraq.
Speaking under a banner graphic reading, ‘Timetable to War’, ITN newsreader Nicholas Owen said:
“It seems the question is no longer +if+ we’ll attack Iraq, but +when+ and +how+. So what happens next? What’s the timetable to war?”
All questions that might be asked by any sane individual at this critical time can safely be dumped, then, in the understanding that imminent war is now simply a fact of life to be accepted. If the powerful have decided on a course of action, then who are +we+ to question or challenge what they have resolved to do. Owen continued:
“Unlike the last Gulf War, there’s no option of leaving Iraq with Saddam still in power. This war +will+ happen and Saddam +will+ be disposed, and that message comes from the top.” (Nicholas Owen)
Again, the “message from America”, this time from the president himself, is war! And so Owen declares war a certainty and predicts the fall of Saddam Hussein. The media’s job is simply to relay the message - rational and moral concerns are of no concern to our free press. Owen then moved on to discuss ‘The Risks’ under a banner headline with the same words, indicating the possible need for hand-to-hand fighting on the streets of Baghdad:
“An urban warfare nightmare in which there could be many casualties… A risky strategy for any US president in a country that doesn’t readily accept its soldiers returning home in body bags.”
Imagine if a massive foreign superpower were contemplating hand-to-hand fighting on the streets of London. Other risks might spring to mind. But, as in Afghanistan, the horrors facing a captive population in thrall to a dictator and targeted by our bombs, is no concern of ours.
Next, correspondent John Irvine in Baghdad:
“On tonight’s News at Ten, I’ll be reporting on the problems any invasion force might face in this country. Following the Gulf War, the Americans do have experience fighting in the desert. But this time the ultimate prize will be different - the capture of this city, Baghdad.”
Note that Irvine can actually stand in the target capital among a civilian population utterly crushed by earlier wars (by the 88,500 tons, the equivalent of seven Hiroshima-sized bombs, dropped during the Gulf War, for example) and a decade of genocidal sanctions, and refer to problems facing only an “invasion force”. The problems facing the hundreds of thousands of people all around him - problems like being mutilated, incinerated and killed - are not now and never have been an issue for our media.
Under a banner graphic reading, ‘War Against Saddam’, Owen continued:
“As John said, he’ll have more on the War Against Saddam on tonight’s New at Ten.”
Within hours of the US announcement of a “material breach”, even as UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw insists (deceptively) this does not mean an automatic trigger for war, ITN has decided in its infinite wisdom, and servility, that this is now a ‘War Against Saddam’.
Finally, Robert Moore in Washington declared:
“The bottom line here at the White House, certainly, president Bush believes that Saddam Hussein has missed his final opportunity to save his regime.”
Thus, with perfect symmetry, ITN’s report ended as it had begun - with a “message from America”, from the powerful - the only message that counts in a media world utterly lost in ignorance, casual brutality and servility.
Media Lens will unfortunately be going off-line over the next week. We would like to say a very sincere thank you to the many readers who swamped the BBC with cogent and heartfelt emails in response to last night’s Media Alert. We hope you will continue sending emails - it is tremendously important to keep challenging the media.
Tonight, both the BBC and ITN maintained the, by now, insane level of saturation propaganda, reporting that sky marshals will be used to protect British planes from terror attack. Before we sign off, we thought it would be interesting to leave you with an explanation from Noam Chomsky of the rationale for this kind of propaganda in preparing a country for war. Please forward this with your letters to the email addresses at the bottom of the page. We send you our very best wishes.
The Editors - Media Lens
“First of all I think we ought to be very cautious about using the phrase ‘War on Terror’. There can’t be a War on Terror. It’s a logical impossibility. The US is one of the leading terrorist states in the world. The guys who are in charge right now were all condemned for terrorism by the World Court. They would have been condemned by the U.N. Security Council except they vetoed the resolution, with Britain abstaining of course. These guys can’t be conducting a war on terror. It’s just out of the question. They declared a war on terror 20 years ago and we know what they did. They destroyed Central America. They killed a million and a half people in southern Africa. We can go on through the list. So there’s no ‘War on Terror…
You’ve got to kind of admire the intellectual classes not to notice that the only people in the world who are afraid of Saddam Hussein are Americans. Everybody hates him and Iraqis are undoubtedly afraid of him, but outside of Iraq and the United States, no one’s afraid of him. Not Kuwait, not Iran, not Israel, not Europe. They hate him, but they’re not afraid of him.
In the United States people are very much afraid, there’s no question about it. The support you see in US polls for the war is very thin, but it’s based on fear. It’s an old story in the United States. When my kids were in elementary school 40 years ago they were taught to hide under desks in case of an atom bomb attack. I’m not kidding. The country is always in fear of everything. Crime for example: Crime in the United States is roughly comparable with other industrial societies, towards the high end of the spectrum. On the other hand, fear of crime is way beyond other industrial societies…
It’s very consciously engendered. These guys now in office, remember they’re almost entirely from the 1980s. They’ve been through it already and they know exactly how to play the game. Right through the 1980s they periodically had campaigns to terrify the population.
To create fear is not that hard, but this time the timing was so obviously for the Congressional campaign that even political commentators got the message. The presidential campaign is going to be starting in the middle of next year. They’ve got to have a victory under their belt. And on to the next adventure. Otherwise, the population’s going to pay attention to what’s happening to them, which is a big assault, a major assault on the population, just as in the 1980s. They’re replaying the record almost exactly. First thing they did in the 1980s, in 1981, was drive the country into a big deficit. This time they did it with a tax cut for the rich and the biggest increase in federal spending in 20 years.
This happens to be an unusually corrupt administration, kind of like an Enron administration, so there’s a tremendous amount of profit going into the hands of an unusually corrupt group of gangsters. You can’t really have all this stuff on the front pages, so you have to push it off the front pages. You have to keep people from thinking about it. And there’s only one way that anybody ever figured out to frighten people and they’re good at it.” (Chomsky, Winter Solstice 2002, Issue 386, WAKE UP! WAKE UP! IT’S YER CHRISTMAS. SchNEWS, CHOM’PIN AT THE BIT)
SUGGESTED ACTION
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- U.S. Intervening Against Democracy in Venezuela
By Mark Weisbrot
December 18, 2002
CARACAS
“Where are they getting their money?” asks historian Samuel Moncada, as the television displays one opposition commercial after another. Moncada is chair of the history department at Central University of Venezuela in Caracas. We are sitting in one of the few restaurants that is open in the eastern, wealthier part of Caracas.
For two weeks during this country’s business-led strike, the privately owned stations that dominate Venezuelan television have been running opposition “infomercials” instead of advertisements, in addition to what is often non-stop coverage of opposition protests.
“I am sure there is money from abroad,” asserts Moncada. It’s a good guess: Prior to the coup on April 11, the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy stepped up its funding to opposition groups, including money funneled through the International Republican Institute. The latter’s funding multiplied more than sixfold, to $340,000 in 2001.
But if history is any guide, overt funding from Washington will turn out to be the tip of the iceberg. This was the case in Haiti, Nicaragua, Chile and other countries where Washington has sought “regime change” because our leaders didn’t agree with the voters’ choice at the polls. (In fact, Washington is currently aiding efforts to oust President Aristide in Haiti ?Efor the second time). In these episodes, which extended into the 1990s, our government concealed amounts up to the hundreds of millions of dollars that paid for such things as death squads, strikes, economic destabilization, electoral campaigns and media.
All this remains to be investigated in this case. But the intentions of the U.S. government are clear. Last week the State Department ordered non-essential embassy personnel to leave the country, and warned American citizens not to travel here. But there have not been attacks on American citizens or companies here, from either side of the political divide, and this is not a particularly dangerous place for Americans to be.
In this situation, the State Department’s extreme measures and warning can only be interpreted as a threat. The Bush Administration has also openly sided with the opposition, demanding early elections here. Then this week Washington changed its position to demanding a referendum on Chavez’s presidency, most likely figuring that a divided opposition could easily lose to Chavez in an election, despite its overwhelming advantage in controlling the major means of communication.
The discussion in the U.S. press, dominated by Washington’s views, has also taken on an Orwellian tone. Chavez is accused of using “dictatorial powers” for sending the military to recover oil tankers seized by striking captains. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer urged the Venezuelan government “to respect individual rights and fundamental freedoms.”
But what would happen to people who hijacked an oil tanker from Exxon-Mobil in the United States? They would be facing a trial and a long prison sentence. Military officers who stood outside the White House and called for the overthrow of the government (and this just six months after a military coup supported by a foreign power) would end up in Guantanamo facing a secret military tribunal for terrorism.
In fact, the U.S. press would be much more fair if it held the Venezuelan government to the standards of the United States. In the U.S., government workers do not have the right to strike at all, as Ronald Reagan demonstrated when he summarily fired 12,000 air traffic controllers in 1981. But even this analogy is incomplete: The air traffic controllers were striking for better working conditions. Here, the employees of the state-owned oil company ?Emostly managers and executives ?Eare trying to cripple the economy, which is heavily dependent on oil exports, in order to overthrow the government. In the United States, even private sector workers do not have the legal right to strike for political demands, and certainly not for the president’s resignation.
In the United States, courts would issue injunctions against the strike, the treasuries of participating unions would be seized, and leaders would be arrested.
Meanwhile, outside of the wealthier areas of eastern Caracas, businesses are open and streets are crowded with shoppers. Life appears normal. This is clearly a national strike of the privileged, and most of the country has not joined it.
More than anything right now, this country needs dialogue and a ratcheting down of the tensions and hostilities between the two opposing camps, so as to avoid a civil war. But this dialogue will never happen if the United States continues to pursue a course of increasing confrontation.
Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in Washington D.C.
